Travel Cafés a success, insists ex-DOT chief

CEBU CITY—Former Tourism Secretary Joseph “Ace” Durano has defended Travel Café Philippines (TCP), a tourism marketing program implemented during his tenure, which state auditors said failed to lure tourists and resulted in losses.

Durano said the TCP was an “out of the box” marketing campaign of the Department of Tourism to mainly promote Philippine tourist destinations abroad.

“The objective of the TCP was to promote Philippine cuisine, destinations and festivals in one venue. I believe TCP achieved this,” Durano said.

Durano, who served as tourism secretary from 2007 to mid-2010, said the effectiveness of the DOT marketing programs during his tenure was evident in the increase in the tourist trade at present.

“I believe the increase in tourist arrivals and investments during these times and corresponding tax revenues generated by these tourism activities plus the jobs generated is the return on investment of the marketing funds Congress entrusted to DOT,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The DOT and TravelnCuisine Philippines Inc. (TnCPI) agreed to set up the TCP in September 2007 to promote Philippine tourist destinations, the Commission on Audit (COA) said in its 2010 annual report.

Best of Philippines

Under the agreement, the TCP would run cafés which would serve the best in Philippine cuisine, coffee and other beverages; travel shops offering Philippine tour packages; travel library of reference materials; and guidebooks on Philippine destinations, COA said.

In exchange for the advertising mileage generated by the TCP, TnCPI was paid a monthly promotional allowance of P200,000.  This was later raised to P300,000 for three years and had run up to P14 million as of Dec. 31, 2010, the COA said.

But COA said TCP had failed to achieve the intended result of encouraging more tourists, especially foreigners, to travel to Philippine tourist destinations.

Minimal interest

Based on TnCPI’s accomplishment report in 2009, only a minimal number of TCP clients and customers were interested in exploring the country.

Unaudited financial statements also showed that TnCPI incurred losses throughout TCP’s operations, it said.

Durano, however, said that when he was DOT chief, they decided to focus the marketing funds on international travel fairs where international tour operators assess and decide which destinations they would push.

“To complement this strategy, we also allocated more funds in inviting and hosting familiarization trips of international travel shows and publications,” he said.

Durano said TCP was a private-public partnership where a private investor operated a travel café using standards developed by DOT.

He said a private investor spent from P5 million to P20 million to put up a travel café depending on size and location.

“DOT’s contribution in this partnership was the advertising support which was really small compared to the investment of the private sector partner,” he said.

Durano said there were travel cafés in Japan and Singapore. In the Philippines, travel cafes were located in SMX at the Mall of Asia and at Greenbelt. Cris Evert B. Lato, Inquirer Visayas